Free GP care for everyone in the State, regardless of their income, would be introduced by the Labour Party within its first four years in Government, it said today.
The party saids this move will cost €389 million, which will be funded by savings made elsewhere in the health service, including €75 million which will be found from cutting the pay of hospital consultants.
The party also plans to transform rather than dismantle the HSE, reduce staff numbers in the organisation by 7,000 through voluntary redundancies, restore responsibility for the annual health budget to the Minister for Health rather than the HSE, and devolve responsibility for running HSE hospitals to local trusts.
In addition, it will introduce a system of universal health insurance cover within six years. Everyone, according to a 90-page document on the proposed changes published today, will be insured for hospital care by either a private or public insurer. The National Treatment Purchase Fund and the purchasing arm of the HSE will come together to provide a new public insurer.
The insurance premia for lower income households would be paid by the State, there would be subsidised premia for those in middle income groups and the premia paid by those in higher income groups would be similar to what they pay already for private health insurance.
Insurance will be compulsory but people will have a choice of insurer.
Labour's health spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said the healthcare system was broken and had to be fixed. She said free GP care had been provided for all in other countries and this could also be done here. This would incentivise people to seek treatment in the primary care sector, where it is cheaper.
She added that the party's healthcare plan had been costed and timetabled and had drawn on extensive research by both the Adelaide Hospital Society and the expert report on health service funding, published last year.
The party's policy document estimates the cost of providing universal insurance for hospital care will be an extra €371 million a year or an extra 5 per cent on hospital spending, but this would be higher if hospital's weren't running at 100 per cent efficiency levels. It says this is the same as the value of tax relief on private health insurance at present.
"The additional 5 per cent cost of universal hospital care insurance will potentially arise in the sixth year .... in six years time economic recovery will mean that more people are in work, on higher incomes and able to contribute to the system, so that if there is a 5 per cent or lower additional cost, this will be funded without any additional cost to the people who are currently contributing to the system," it says.